Introduction
Bullying hurts the academic performance of the victims since it limits their participation in the school environment. Harassment affects the emotional and social well-being of victimized children. Students who are bullied find it hard to concentrate in the classroom and portray a decreased interest in attending classes. As a result, it is challenging for victims to understand taught content and thus cannot handle academic tests effectively. Bullied students develop fear and anxiety that keep them away from school to avoid further victimization. Harassment in school affects student achievement negatively since it makes it hard for them to concentrate in class and causes intentional absenteeism to prevent additional instances of bullying.
Bullying Statistics
Intimidation refers to aggressive behavior intended to lead to harm or distress, entails a power imbalance between the victim and aggressor, and repeatedly happens as time goes on. To sum it up, bullying has three primary elements: unwanted aggression, perceived imbalance of power, and repetition of the aggressor’s behavior (Gaffney et al., 2019). Bullying takes various forms, including verbal, social, physical, and cyber. Verbal bullying involves threatening, making sexist comments, and teasing. In contrast, social bullying entails isolation, embarrassment, and spreading rumors. Physical bullying may include destroying possessions, assaulting, and aggressive gesturing (Smokowski & Evans, 2019). Ultimately, students aged 12-18 experience bullying by becoming the subject of lies or rumors, being called names or insulted, and being pushed, spit on, tripped, or shoved.
Around nineteen percent of students in grades nine to twelve are victims of bullying. Schoolchildren experience harassment in several places in educational institutions, including classrooms, cafeterias, text or online, locker rooms or bathrooms, stairwells, and hallways. About forty-eight percent of adolescents bullied on school premises notify adults. Among the total number of bullying victims, fifteen percent are bullied by text or online. Internationally, about a third of the world’s youth become bullying victims (Smokowski & Evans, 2019). Low socioeconomic status is the primary factor causing youth bullying in wealthy nations, as immigrant-born youth are bullied more than those who are locally born.
Mental Health of Bully-Victims
Bullying victims experience an intolerable amount of distress, and thus, they are anxious and insecure and have high depression rates, negative self-image, and low self-esteem. For instance, if an adolescent walks by the hallway and his classmates call him a faggot. During lunchtime, no classmates would talk to him. In the gym, his clothes are stolen, and he is forced to spend the rest of the time wearing gym shorts. These aspects of the environment can have a negative impact on the development of behavioral patterns and psychological well-being of an adolescent (Leve et al., 2012). Therefore, it is unsurprising that bullying victims report high depression rates, withdrawal, and anxiety than bullies and bystanders, decreasing their ability to concentrate in class. Victims face physical and verbal harassment repeatedly and often do not know when they will be attacked again. As a result, bullying victims are always on high alert, constantly waiting for the next mean comment or slap (Smokowski & Evans, 2019). If the victims are students, there is almost zero chance they will concentrate on their studies.
The state of being on a high alert is followed by a trauma experience called hypervigilance, which is a common symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. When a horrible event like bullying occurs intermittently, it is unpredictable and can happen at any time; the bullying victims are always hyperactive. In addition, the bullying victim’s stress response remains activated, waiting for the next attack. The constant state of high alertness leaves victims on edge, feeling anxious with racy adrenaline. Bullying victims constantly scan the environment, and their thoughts are preoccupied with scenarios of harassment. Failing to know when the following bullying incident will occur to them, bully-victims face a state of stress and vulnerability (Smokowski & Evans, 2019). The restlessness caused by the feeling of uncertainty leads to a lack of concentration in classes, leading to low academic performance among bully-victims.
Harassment leads to chronic stress, which has grave negative emotional and physical consequences. Chronic stress muscles in the body tense, resulting in tension, migraines, and headaches. The human body’s stress response turns off when a stressor is eliminated in normal circumstances. Nevertheless, with chronic stress caused by bullying, the stressor remains constant, and therefore, the body’s stress response stays active, overexposing the human body to stress hormones. As a result, the risk for long-term adverse outcomes such as digestive problems, sleep problems, headaches, depression, and anxiety even in adulthood (Ege et al., 2015). All the negative consequences collectively lead to impaired memory and concentration. Compared to noninvolved youth and bullies, bully-victims and victims report a high likelihood of tension, sleep problems, dizziness, and fatigue. Such symptoms are partly caused by chronic stress resulting from victimization and may result in the development of suicidal tendencies (Sandler et al., 2021; Smokowski & Evans, 2019). Such issues affect the students’ concentration in learning.
Additionally, constant verbal and physical attacks centered around a person’s vulnerabilities damage their self-esteem, making them sad and lonely. Thus, it is not surprising that victimized youth often feel depressed, which is especially relevant for female victims (Bergenfeld et al., 2021; Hoyt et al., 2020). Bullying is an all-encompassing experience, and the resulting depression can be highly severe, leading to suicidal thoughts. A reason students cannot concentrate on their studies is social exclusion (Nicolopoulou, 1993). Bullying is painful because it causes isolation. Humans are programmed to be social beings who want to enjoy the support, nurturance, and protection of a particular social group. Harassment excludes victims from a social network, which is painful since people have an innate desire to belong to various connections. Most students are still adolescents who need social links and belonging because they are vulnerable and desperately want to gain independence from family and form their identity (Arslan et al., 2021). Thus, they consider themselves outcasts which may affect their learning concentration.
In addition, bullying is frequently done in public places, which is humiliating. Harassment is considered an embarrassment that violates the primary human need for social connection, recognition, and respect, leading to intense anger. If students internalize the rage, they can become depressed. In contrast, if the offense is externalized, it can lead to retaliation which explains why some youths are considered bully-victims (Ringdal et al., 2020). Due to intense humiliation, victimized youth develop low self-esteem, leading to social ostracism and leaving them feeling alone and worthless (Aremu et al., 2018). When bullied victims internalize harassment messages which indicate they are unneeded, unloved, unwanted, and flawed, they experience pain similar to physical discomfort. The pain caused by social rejection stimulates the receptors that transmit physical pain signals (Smokowski & Evans, 2019). As a result, bullying victims are stressed and cannot concentrate on their studies.
Bullying victims may form cognitive attributions in their minds that create the negative lens through which victimized youth interpret fresh interactions and experiences. The negative comments make bullying victims develop a negative lens that they use to evaluate new experiences. This is due to the imprinting of social patterns acquired from observations of others and the environment (Folkvord et al., 2020). As a result, victims may change their social context, but they have a high chance of experiencing victimization again. In addition, bullied persons often have a disempowered worldview due to negative attribution, allowing victims to expect continued rejection and stop creating positive relationships. As a result, bullied students lose interest in forging new relationships affecting their academic performance. Occasionally, the adverse attributions may create psychological pain, making victims consider revenge or suicide (Arslan et al., 2021). It is critical to understand that a student having suicidal thoughts will find it difficult to concentrate during classes. Ultimately, the mental health of the bullied causes a loss of concentration among students, which may lead to low academic performance.
Impact on Perpetrators’ Mental Health
It may be easy to blame those who bully other individuals since perpetrators select to be cruel to their classmates. While it may be true, perpetrators are motivated by various factors. Bullying aggressors show the highest depression rates and suicidal ideation. As a result, it is accurate to suggest that youth bullies are often affected by poor mental states and channel their problems to harm others (Smokowski & Evans, 2019). Youth with a specific mental disorder have a higher chance of bullying others than noninvolved children, leaving less time for them to study.
Perpetrators of bullying often have problems with their confidence and self-esteem. Some of them may feel insecure and threatened by those who appear confident. As a result, they resort to violence to gain increased social power. When bullies who have low self-esteem harm their classmates, they use harassment to subjugate less powerful peers, which may give them a sense of accomplishment and confidence. Ultimately, involvement in bullying negatively impacts many participants, including bully victims and victims who suffer the most from high depression and anxiety rates. Bully perpetrators are affected by poor mental health, such as increased depression and anxiety, which may explain the elevated suicidal ideation rates (Smokowski & Evans, 2019). Although not all bullies experience poor mental health, those with mental health issues are prone to making mistakes in school and eventually dropping out.
In addition, childhood maltreatment and victimization at an early age are risk factors for pregnancy. Most women from minorities have an increased risk of having a pregnancy (Beck et al., 2018). Teen pregnancy is detrimental to a student’s mental health as some may constantly think about abortion or leaving school to deliver. Furthermore, bullying victims are initiated into sex at an early age, which increases their pregnancy risk. Ultimately, pregnant female adolescents have a higher chance of dropping out of school to care for an unborn child than male adolescents who are to become fathers (Benson & Furstenberg Jr., 2006; Charlton et al., 2018). As a result, their academic progress is halted because they are unable to concentrate while pregnant.
Peer Relationships
Victimized persons often keep problematic peer relationships due to low social competence levels. Social competence is the ability of a child to maintain and form positive relationships with their peers through social skills mastery and reactions to social stimuli. Existing scholarship shows that low social competence predicts victimization, while high social competence leads to bullying. Low social competence causes difficulties when navigating relationships with peers, leading to bullying victims having few acquaintances and feeling excluded and lonely. Low social competence makes some youths targets of bullying, and constant harassment destroys youths’ methods and stops them from improving their social competence. Once bullying starts, it is hard for victims to avoid their perpetrators. In addition, classmates may refuse interactions with bullying victims for fear of being bullied. As a result, students have few friends to form meaningful study groups and support networks (Smokowski & Evans, 2019). Thus, they cannot perform well academically since they do not have many opportunities to engage in prosocial interactions.
Harassment affects the school environment significantly as it impacts victims’ friends. Bullying victims have friends who are frequently less adjusted to harassment. Therefore, acquaintances of bullying victims report feeling lonely and rejected, indicating they are victims and unable to protect themselves. Students who are bullied engage in dysfunctional social activities with their friends or aggressors. In addition, victims and their friends experience poor mental health due to bullying. Furthermore, bullying victims and their friends avoid supportive relationships because of embarrassment, shame, and self-consciousness (Arslan et al., 2021). Bullying victims and their friends increase the number of people who are often absent-minded, stressed, lonely, isolated, and fail to focus on their academics.
Victimization perpetrators have complicated relationships because they may lack attachment from close friends and parents. Therefore, bullies may be unable to form real, meaningful connections with other classmates (Wachs et al., 2020). Attachment theory argues that interacting with supportive persons imparts a sense of safety and triggers positive emotions such as relief, gratitude, satisfaction, and love (Polan & Hofer, 1999). Furthermore, attachment makes psychological resources available to easily deal with problems. However, bullying perpetrators may lack such figures to guide them, which affects their overall mental health. Attachment affects a person’s emotional and social well-being, which subsequently affects their confidence and ability to create lasting social relationships (Beebe & Lachmann, 2014). As a result, bullying perpetrators find it hard to concentrate in class.
Youth who harass others experience adverse school experiences. Bullies, bully-victims, and victims report low school bonding levels, less monitoring, and high school aggressiveness compared to noninvolved youth. The damaging perceptions of the school environment impact the academic performance of perpetrators. Furthermore, compared with noninvolved children and victims, bullies achieve poorer academic results (Smokowski & Evans, 2019). According to Bergold et al. (2020), there are significant differences between high-performing students and those who score low on tests. Thus, it is critical to treat all students equally regardless of their cognitive abilities. Failing to do so negatively impacts their well-being, which increases their chances of leaving school (Bergold et al., 2020). Ultimately, bullying perpetrators may drop out of school when they lose interest in learning.
Victims of coercion view school as an unsafe and dangerous place. Compared with youth who are not victimized, victims report lower connectedness in school and high dissatisfaction levels. In addition, existing scholarship indicates that adverse school experiences are primarily linked to victimization. Bullying victims often perceive the school environment as hazardous and regard their peers as unaccepting and unsupportive. Victims have negative perceptions of the school environment caused by teachers’ perceptions that fail to protect victims from bullying. The lack of support from school management and peers makes victims think of the learning environment as hostile and unsupportive, leading to social disengagement, which partly explains why bully victims and victims have low achievement scores (Smokowski & Evans, 2019). Students in unsupportive school environments have decreased feelings of belonging to the school, which increases dropout rates and decreases academic performance.
Bystanders
Bystanders often report feelings of insecurity and anxiety, which stem from avoiding retaliation. As a result, bystanders cannot seek help because they are afraid of revenge. Witnessing harassment can predict mental health problems in perpetrators and victims. Furthermore, bystanders may be prone to utilizing increased levels of substance use. Students involved in bullying often report increased interpersonal sensitivity, possible suicidal ideation, and helplessness. When bystanders witness bullying episodes, some become angry and upset and may feel emphatic. Furthermore, some bystanders report feeling alone and traumatized after witnessing bullying. Both witnesses and victims feel distressed when recounting memories of various experiences (Midgett & Doumas, 2019). Reliving the memory of bystanders is similar to experiencing a real traumatic experience, which may adversely affect learning.
The trauma linked to being bystanders to harassment can reduce mental health functioning. For instance, bystanders experience a higher risk of suicidal thoughts than noninvolved youth. In addition, women with a dual role of bystander and victim are more likely to endorse life-ending ideas than uninvolved youth and witnesses. Witnessing bullying can be traumatic for various reasons. Seeing a person being traumatized can be a horrible experience. Bystanders directly see victims exposed to real emotional and physical injury, which can traumatize witnesses if they have high empathy levels (Midgett & Doumas, 2019). When bystanders are highly empathetic, they internalize the victim’s experiences and, in some way, feel what bullying victims go through, increasing their distress, which adversely impacts their concentration in class.
Furthermore, bystanders often worry that they may be the next victims, leading to hyperarousal and increased anxiety. Witnessing bullying episodes reminds a bystander that the aggressor can turn on them anytime, which may lead to social humiliation. As a result, bystanders may be on high alert, making them repeatedly scan environments for probable threats. Humans hate social isolation; thus, they can be willing to do almost anything to achieve their goals. If witnesses evaluate a situation and decide that protecting a victim can harm their social connections, they may opt to avoid social humiliation (Callaghan et al., 2019). Bystanders also suffer in the school environment because they may feel guilty about not helping a victim, which may cause feelings of helplessness, despair, and depression. The trauma and restlessness caused by thinking about bullying acts reduce the time a student has to study and concentrate on various topics (Smokowski & Evans, 2019). Although direct involvement in bullying is harmful, witnesses experience long-lasting and immediate feelings of psychological discomfort and guilt, including anxiety and depression.
Conclusion
In conclusion, bullying in the school environment impacts students’ academic performance negatively as it causes decreased concentration and fear. Bullying is a social phenomenon because it affects approximately one in five students. The most common factor that affects students’ attention in the learning environment is mental health. The mental health of bullying perpetrators and victims is adversely affected by harassment, which hinders learners’ ability to concentrate on their studies and perform well on academic tests. Bullying affects peer relationships negatively, as in the case of victims. Victimized youth tend to have fewer friends and thus fewer social networks, which makes it hard to build meaningful interactions with their peers in the classroom. In addition, victimized youth may feel alone and, in extreme circumstances, develop suicidal ideation. The school environment also impacts bystanders. Every student who witnesses a classmate being bullied qualifies as a bystander. They may experience trauma caused by reliving the traumatic experiences of victims. Ultimately, bullying is a severe social problem that should be addressed to avoid adverse outcomes.
References
Aremu, T. A., John-Akinola, Y., & Desmennu, A. (2018). Relationship between parenting styles and adolescents’ self-esteem. International Quarterly of Community Health Education, 39(9), 91-99.
Arslan, G., Allen, K. A., & Tanhan, A. (2021). School bullying, mental health, and wellbeing in adolescents: Mediating impact of positive psychological orientations. Child Indicators Research, 14(3), 1007-1026.
Beck, A., Franz, C.E., Xian, H., Vuoksimaa, E., Tu, X., Reynolds, C.A., Panizzon, M.S., McKenzie, R.M., Lyons, M.J., Toomey, R., Jacobson, K.C., Hauger, R.L., Hatton, S.N., Kremen, W.S. (2018). Mediators of the effect of childhood socioeconomic status on late midlife cognitive abilities: A four decade longitudinal study. Innovation in Aging, 2(1), 1-12.
Beebe, B., & Lachmann, F. M. (2014). The origins of attachment: Infant research and adult treatment. Routledge.
Benson, J. E. and Furstenberg Jr., F. F. (2006). Entry into adulthood: Are adult role transitions meaningful markers of adult identity? Advances in Life Course Research, 11(3), 199-224.
Bergenfeld, I., Clark, C. J., khan, Z., Jackson, E. C., Yount, K. M. (2021). Gender-sensitive school environment and bullying victimization among adolescent girls: A multilevel study in Nepal. PLoS ONE, 16(7), 1-19.
Bergold, S., Wirthwein, L., & Steinmayr, R. (2020). Similarities and differences between intellectually gifted and average-ability students in school performance, motivation, and subjective well-being. Gifted Child Quarterly, 64(4), 285-303.
Callaghan, M., Kelly, C., & Molcho, M. (2019). Bullying and bystander behaviour and health outcomes among adolescents in Ireland. J Epidemiol Community Health, 73(5), 416-421.
Charlton, B. M., Roberts, A. L., Rosario, M., Katz-Wise, S. L., Calzo, J. P., Spiegelman, D., & Austin, S. B. (2018). Teen pregnancy risk factors among young women of diverse sexual orientations. Pediatrics, 141(4).
Ege, M.A., Messias, E., Thapa, P. B., & Krain, L. P. (2015). Adverse childhood experiences and geriatric depression: Results from the 2010 BRFSS. National Library of Medicine, 23(1), 110-114.
Folkvord, F., Anschütz, D., & Geurts, M. (2020). Watching TV cooking programs: Effects on actual food intake among children. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 52(1), 3-9.
Gaffney, H., Ttofi, M. M., & Farrington, D. P. (2019). Evaluating the effectiveness of school-bullying prevention programs: An updated meta-analytical review. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 45, 111-133.
Hoyt, L. T., Niu, L., Pachucki, M. C., & Chaku, N. (2020). Timing of puberty in boys and girls: Implications for population health. SSM Population Health, 10, 1-12.
Leve, L. D., Neiderhiser, J. M., Shaw, J. M., Ganiban, J., Natsuaki, M. N., & Reiss, D. (2012). The early growth and development study: A prospective adoption study from birth through middle childhood. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 16(1), 412-423.
Midgett, A., & Doumas, D. M. (2019). Witnessing bullying at school: The association between being a bystander and anxiety and depressive symptoms. School Mental Health, 11(3), 454-463.
Nicolopoulou, A. (1993). Play, cognitive development, and the social world: Piaget, Vygotsky, and beyond. Human Development, 36, 1-23.
Polan, H. J., & Hofer, M. A. (1999). Psychobiological origins of infant attachment and its role in development. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 162-180). The Guilford Press.
Ringdal, R., Espnes, G. A., Eilertsen, M. E. B., BjØrnsen, H. N., & Moksnes, U. K. (2020). Social support, bullying, school-related stress and mental health in adolescence. Nordic Psychology, 72(4), 313-330.
Sandler, I., Yun-Tien, J., Zhang, N., Wolchik, S., and Thieleman, K. (2021). Grief as a predictor of long-term risk for suicidal ideation and attempts of parentally bereaved children and adolescents. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 34(6), 1159-1170.
Smokowski, P. R., & Evans, C. B. (2019). Bullying and victimization across the lifespan: Playground power and politics. Springer International Publishing.
Wachs, S., Görzig, A., Wright, M. F., Schubarth, W., & Bilz, L. (2020). Associations among adolescents’ relationships with parents, peers, and teachers, self-efficacy, and willingness to intervene in bullying: A social cognitive approach. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(2), 1-16.